Open source is all well and good, but I am rather sad to see that you won't be working on this game very much anymore. I really hope this can be streamlined into one "official" version instead of people taking the source code and making dozens of versions.

Also, yes, I don't think Uplink clones would bring much new to the table. However, an online version how Waahsabi describes it (especially with blackmailing and posing as different users) would definitely be very interesting. One thing to note, however, is that new agents shouldn't immediately be "killed off" by experienced ones that have all kinds of programs to make an operation like that trivial. If "The Game" gets enough players, most people probably won't notice new users, but if there is a "News" section like in Uplink, it might still be quite easy for experienced hackers to trace the connection from a hacked system back to the user who hacked the system.
Unless that works completely differently, I don't really know. A simple "Disable PvP" option definitely wouldn't be the right way to go with this game.